Monday, 12 March 2012

There is always the temptation for writers, analysts and political leaders, all with an eye on future historical narrative, to ascribe a symbolic significance to contemporary events which suggest a break with an old order and the birth of the new. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan captured the mood of decolonisation with his reference to the ‘Wind of Change’ then “blowing across the African continent” in a 1960 speech to a largely indifferent Apartheid-era Parliament in South Africa.

In contrast to this positive message of liberation his predecessor, Winston Churchill, had thirteen years earlier gloomily assessed the series of communist party takeovers in Post War-Eastern Europe as akin to the descending of an ‘Iron Curtain’ across a continent. Both, the decolonisation of Black Africa and the sovietisation of Eastern Europe, represent the sum of individual but ultimately related national revolutions.

Revolutions are multifaceted. They may be wholly directed and executed by elites or may be engineered by a ground swell of action by segments of the masses. They may be of indigenous origin or may in fact be exported from a foreign source. By definition, they will always involve upheaval and change; out with the old and in with the new, and are often accompanied by some measure of violence, whether as the means used for effecting the change, or, as a means of resisting such change.

Those revolutions which are genuine evocations of the will of the masses and which would largely be composed of uncoordinated protests through mass gatherings, rioting or other forms of civil disobedience eventually need a focus for leadership and an underpinning rationale of the ideas proposing change.

In such circumstances, where one ideological tenet does not underscore the discontent which is driving the mass of people, the danger exists that the removal of the leader or leadership will leave a vacuum which would be filled in, or, for want of a better word, would be ‘hijacked’ by a well-organised group which may not represent the will of the people as arguably occurred with the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and the Khomeini-led Islamists in Iran in 1979.

Revolutions of the popular imagination for the most part emphasize the role played by the common person. Thus, at the heart of the romantic notions with which revolutions are imbued are the deeds of the worker, the student, the farm hand, the rank and file soldier, the housewife and so on.

Contemporarily, in keeping with the need for soundbite-type captions, revolutions as expressions of the largely non-violent masses come with names such as the Czech ‘Velvet Revolution’, the Ukrainian ‘Orange Revolution’ and Georgia’s ‘Rose Revolution’.

When we think of peoples revolutions of the not too distant past, our minds cast back to the ‘People Power Revolution’ of the Philippines which brought an end to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and the ushering of democracy.

A few years later, the revolutions in Eastern Europe among the former nations of the Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact led to the collapse of totalitarian regimes, most memorably the chain of events leading to the fall of Romania’s Nikolai Ceausescu and the symbolic breaching of the Berlin Wall.

It is one thing, however, to describe and analyse a current chain of events, but quite another to invoke prophecy before they happen. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc regimes and the ending of the ’Cold War’, Francis Fukuyama infamously declared that the expected spread of liberal democratic forms of government at the expense of increasingly untenable totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, would mark the ‘end of history’.

John R. Bradley, a writer specialising in the history and politics of the Middle East, was less grandiose but extremely prescient in predicting the Egyptian uprising of 2011 in his 2008 book Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaoh’s on the Brink of a Revolution, which was banned by the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The series of ‘revolutions’ which came to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’ began when a Tunisian trader by the name of Mohamed Boazizi committed suicide by immolating himself at the frustration at allegedly having his goods seized by an overly officious official of state. This in turn triggered a series of protests which eventually led to the deposing of President Ben Ali who fled into Saudi Arabian exile.

The example of Tunisia was then followed by Egyptian’s whose protests were focussed in Tahrir Square in the capital city of Cairo. Like Ben Ali, long-term dictator, Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down. Like a ‘Domino Effect’, the upheavals then spread to Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria.

The Western media followed events with great interest and intensity, as indeed did the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera News Network. The line taken by the media was that the masses of the Arab nations, tired of corrupt and despotic regimes, were thirsting for Western-style freedoms as represented by a political system of liberal democracy in which pluralism and individual rights would assume primacy.

Like the Czechoslovaks, who under Alexander Dubcek had attempted to unshackle themselves from the Soviet system via a process of liberalisation in an episode referred to as the ‘Prague Spring’, so it was that the Arabs wished to dislodge the perennial scourge of dictatorship from their countries.

While the media rhapsodized about the efforts of groups in Tahrir Square who valiantly organised themselves and disseminated information via social networking sites such as facebook and twitter, United States President Barak Obama claimed that the uprisings were ‘proof’ that the Arab masses had not been influenced by Al-Queda and Islamic fundamentalist thinking, but by Western ideals of freedom and pluralism.

Not so claims Bradley, whose After the Arab Spring examines the underlying motivations of the demonstrators in Tunisia and Egypt, and also explains why those who represent the ‘Western liberal’ reformist segment of the political classes in these countries are not in a strong enough position to assume the mantle of leadership.

His thesis is straightforward enough: years of Western governments’ indulging of Arab dictatorships whose repressive measures largely submerged viable liberal-leaning opponents, but who while cracking down on Islamists also left enough of their structures in existence to serve as a bargaining tool with the West, has meant that Islamic fundamentalists in both Tunisia and Egypt, represented respectively by Ennahda and Al-Gamaa Al Islamiya, are poised to take over these societies.

Interestingly, he claims that these groups are not necessarily concerned with seizing power immediately, and instead would rather concentrate on Islamisizing the societies from the bottom up. The future, they believe, belongs to them.

He gives ample evidence of the efforts of the well-organised adherents of Salafism, an extremist Islamic creed which professes a wish to return to the pre-modern application of the religion, in enforcing Islamic codes and mores on the streets. Salafism is the puritan Egyptian counterpart of Saudi Wahhabism.

In his book The Siege of Mecca (2007), Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov, traced a direct line between the armed insurrection in the holy city by one Juhaymon Ul-Taibi and his followers to the events of September 11th 2001 and the contemporary struggle between the West and Islamic fundamentalists.

In short, stunned by the severe criticism of the perceived extent of encroaching ‘Westernisation’ of Saudi society by clerics, the Saudi royals entered a deal whereby in exchange from not interfering with their running of the country, they would sponsor the policy of extending Wahhabism via the establishment of a network of Islamic centers of education, known as madrassas, in the wider world. The net result argued Trofimov, has been a rise in extremism and the fodder for the Jihadist guerrillas and terrorists who have been waging war against the Western world.

With the fall of the Tunisian government, Muamar Gadaffi in Libya, the rising influence of Egyptian Islamists and the potential fall of the Baathist regime of Hafez Al Assad’s Syria, one of the results of the so-called Arab Spring would be the dislodging of the remnants of secularism in the Arab world.

In Tunisia, a country built on the charismatic leadership of Habib Bourguiba, the gains made in terms of social and economic freedoms appear to be dissipating in the aftermath of the fall of Ben Ali. Bradley persuasively argues that the ‘social contract’ by which Tunisians enjoyed a wide range of freedoms and benefits in return for not mounting political challenges has perhaps been irrevocably broken.

He is particularly good at pointing out the hypocrisy of the West who armed and supported Libyan rebels against Gadaffi, but who turned a blind eye to the suppression of Bahraini protesters by Saudi troops acting to protect the monarchical despots who rule that nation.

When Gadaffi announced that the West was arming insurrectionists who were adherents to the philosophy espoused by Al-Quaeda, the media smirked. But events have since proved him right. Armed to the teeth, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group along with a rabble of vengeful, racist and genociadal rebels have butchered their foes in a series of beheadings and mutilations culminating in the lynching of Gadaffi himself.

In a short but excellent segment of analysis which illuminates the nature of power politics, as well as the expediency of the sorts of ‘unholy’ and alliances Western powers have consistently made in the Middle East, Bradley compares and contrasts the kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the republic of Iran; the former, a Sunni nation which oppresses the Shia minority in its oil rich eastern province, and the latter, a Shia nation that marginalises the Sunni minority in its oil producing Khuzestan province.

Run as theocracies, both are regional rivals whose competiveness is exacerbated by the current uprisings. Many of the features of their governance are antithetical to the values espoused by the United States. Yet, America backs the Saudis to the hilt and turns a blind eye to its foreign interventions, the virulent anti-Jewish propaganda in its learning curricula and its human rights violations while demonizing Iran.

But of course, Realpolitik, holds sway: Saudi Arabian action in putting down Shia protests in Bahrain not only perpetuates the Sunni hegemony in that country, it also protects the interests of the United States because of the naval base stationed there.

It also means that the kingdom will vote for the US and bring along the Arab league in a half-filled conclave in support of US and Western European bid for Libyan oil, while America and its allies turn a blind eye to Saudi suppression of revolts in its troublesome Shia region.

The fallacy of the claim that NATO was protecting demonstrators from being massacred in Libya is confirmed by the lack of evidence of any mass killings having taken place. It is clear that the Americans wish to use the uprisings as an excuse to remove those countries in opposition to its foreign policy objectives.

Bradley does not go into the motives the West went for broke in seeking the ouster of Colonel Gadaffi. Certainly, it is difficult to see how the blood of Libyan protesters is more precious than the blood split by protesters in Bahrain, Yemen or Syria where, so far, the Western powers have been unwilling to intervene.

And while oil played a part in it, so too, it is argued, did Gadaffi’s plan to introduce the gold dinar, an African currency which would have rivalled the dollar and the euro. The idea that African and Muslim nations would sell oil and other resources around the world in a currency other than for dollars and euros is one which the West ultimately could not countenance.

With Gadaffi gone, the other states which would be targeted are Syria and Iran, both of which enjoy good relations with Russia and China. It may be a long-term geo-political ploy engineered in the corridors of Washington’s policymakers’ and ‘think tanks’ linked to Western corporate interests to contain the threat of these nations.

Nonetheless, with the unleashing of the forces of puritanical Islam, such meddling may ultimately come back to haunt the West. The expedient support of Mujahideen guerrillas in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan among whose ranks was the young Osama Bin Laden springs to mind, as does the advent of a Shia dominated, and Iranian-influenced government in post-invasion Iraq.

It is perhaps a lazy analysis to infer that the West is inadvertently presiding over the creation of a modern Islamic Caliphate, but the irony is that such scheming may lead to the cultural and political domination of North Africa and the Middle East by Sunni Islamism under the suzerainty of the Wahabist Saudi kingdom.

If this happened, it would signal the final victory of the proponents of pan-Islam over the secularists who in the heyday of Gamal Abdel Nasser had projected the cause of pan-Arabism under the stewardship of Nasser.

If one primary result of the so-called Arab Spring is the dislodging of the remnants of secularism in the Arab world, it is a cause for concern, notwithstanding that the overthrown regimes were corrupt or oppressive. As Bradley points out, Ben Ali largely continued Bourguiba’s policies which led to a strong economy and individual freedoms so long as they did not challenge the political authority of the rulers.

He mentions nothing about Gadaffi’s achievements. Yet, his eccentricities notwithstanding, the Jamahiriyan republic of Libya provided free education and health services to the masses , as in Tunisia women were accorded opportunities for social advancement. Not least among his achievements was the feat of developing the ‘Great Man Made River Project’ which provided water to the country’s major cities.

The apostate-form of Ba’athism as practised in the police state of Syria nonetheless has kept a balance of peace and protection for the rights and interests of different ethnic and religious groups. The removal of Assad and the Alawite minority from control would lead to a Sunni-Shia conflict in the midst of which the Christian minority, as happened in Iraq and is happening in Egypt, would face increasing persecution.

So what to make of the ‘Arab Spring’? Despite the grandiloquent passages in the initial rose tinted coverage by the Western media which waxed lyrical with the usual sentimental metaphors and motifs of revolution, the uprisings have been shown to bear little of the romantic notion of fighting for Western-style liberal democracy; most protesters having been simply motivated by their deteriorating economic circumstances.

That Arab societies seem perpetually to be governed by dictatorships need not be considered a foible of fate or adjudged to be an ineradicable cultural phenomenon, if a ‘social contract’ of the sort established by Bourguiba in Tunisia brings about positive social and economic advancement.

But even the overthrow of Gadaffi which involved the decimation of Libya’s infrastructure by NATO and the deaths which have ensued has thrown Libya onto the path of an instability from which it will be difficult to recover. The covert and overt interventions by the West’s military and intelligence services has simply helped unleash the forces of religious intolerance and tribal chauvinism in many of the affected nations.

Bradley’s discourse provides sufficient evidence that the West’s role in promoting and directing events without ultimately achieving the secularization and democratization of the powerhouse nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran will ensure that an apparent victory in unseating the regimes of certain countries will, ultimately in the long term, be a pyrrhic one.

Monday, 5 March 2012

There are several component parts making up the sum of what historically made the sport of boxing a vital and compelling form of entertainment for the American fight fan. Primary among these was the development of raw talent from the neighbourhood clubs as well as overseeing the transition of amateur fighters to the professional ranks through the state and nationwide boxing programs.

There was also the requirement that the promoters matched such talent competitively and regularly if they were to hold the interest of the fans. It is no surprise therefore that the maladies of contemporary boxing stem, arguably, from the non-availability and the mishandling of talent as is palpably demonstrable with the state of the heavyweight division. It is also quite clear that for a miscellany of reasons, fight promoters are failing to deliver genuinely competitive bouts in the main event and under-the-bill match ups. The reasons for the aforementioned continue to be argued and debated upon by members of the fight community.

One other matter consistently featuring in the heated discourse on the state of the sport is the standard of officiating. The fallout from recent world title matches involving Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz, and Amir Khan and Lamont Peterson are examples of bouts which caught the eye of the wider news media for all the wrong reasons.

For the aficionado, however, part of the overriding sense of malaise and degeneration in the fortunes of the sport which he loves is increasingly centred on the quality of refereeing.

Unlike other fields of professional activity where optimum standards of performance are demanded, and a high enough threshold is demarcated for practitioners to function at a level which is acceptable, it has often appeared that the administrators of the sport have been rather lax in enforcing minimum levels of competence.

Consider for instance, the debacle which ensued at the end of the bout between Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz. The signals and the instructions given by the referee were not clear and precise enough; and almost reminiscent of the second Muhammad Ali versus Sonny Liston bout, Joe Cortez allowed his attention to be drawn away from the fighters. It is not being presumptuous to speak about cardinal principles in refereeing the sport of boxing, and Cortez broke more than one that night.

Some would tend to view refereeing as a combination of both art and science, involving the exhibition of both mental and, to an extent, physical strengths. The referee sets the tone for the fight. He is an impartial arbiter who must covey authority without being overbearing, and must also have developed a level of focus and concentration; a presence of mind, to an extent that when called upon, he can demonstrate razor sharp reactions.

If, as is widely argued, there has been a diminution in refereeing standards, the question then has to be asked why this is the case. Is it, for instance, a situation where referees do not receive the requisite amount of training in order to sufficiently cope with the demands of a professional boxing contest? Or might it be that the pool of talent for referees is somewhat constricted? What criteria, it may be asked, is referred to when selecting referees for assignments? This is a key issue, given that the selection of referees has a bearing on the credibility of sport both from the perspectives of the aficionado-fan and the wider sporting world.

With what specific attributes should a competent boxing referee be imbued? Some argue that rather as is the case with the fighters, a referee should gain experience within the amateur game before graduating to the professional ranks. The argument goes along the lines that they are inculcated with the fundamentals of the game; learning for posterity, the essential habits of concentrating on the fighting in the ring and enforcing discipline.

But there is a counter argument. There are those who insist that an amateur refereeing background, including having experience at Golden Gloves and Olympic levels, translates poorly into the professional ranks and is demonstrated by some referees who tend to be unnecessarily authoritarian and overly intrusive in the fights.

Whatever the pre-pro bout experience of some specific referees, those who are familiar with the peculiarities of the chaotic contest between Miguel Cotto and Yuri Foreman in June of 2010 will perhaps be appreciative of this point. The BBC headlined its report as a “New York Farce”.

One particular area of concern regarding the handling of bouts involves the degree to which referees should intervene to separate fighters. There is of course no question that when one fighter ‘ties up’ another as a defensive measure or as a persistent manoeuvre aimed at frustrating his opponent, the referee should act to prise them apart, and in so doing will be facilitating the fluid progression of the bout.

However, a problem arises when one boxer is attempting to engage in ‘inside fighting’ and is prevented from doing so. When fighters complain that “I wasn’t allowed to fight my type of fight” as in the case of Ricky Hatton during his bout with Floyd Mayweather, the factor of a referee acting as less than a neutral arbiter comes in to play, since his actions serve to obstruct the rhythm of the one who is disadvantaged while aiding the game plan of the other.

This does not condone the sort of referee who takes the other extreme of affecting a ‘non-interventionist’, aloof strategy. By consistently situating themselves at places in the ring which are arguably too far from the action, the danger exists that he may become almost detached from the proceedings, and that his reactions to a situation may be affected by his distance from the combatants. Close calls are missed, and the possibility that the referee may intervene a punch or two too late is a risk not worth taking.

While referees are not expected to be within the age range of most active fighters or to be as physically honed, it does grate some when they set about their task pot-bellied and grossly overweight.

A referee must also be independent and not be swayed either by actions of ‘super star’ boxers or the emotions of a crowd; the latter evidently occurring six years ago in Germany when Arthur Abraham was allowed to fight open mouthed from a broken jaw in his fight with Edison Miranda.

The pungent whiff of favouritism and political expediency has for some time tainted the decisions reached in the selecting of officials, and this has manifested itself in the unsatisfactory conduct of a number of bouts. Those who have benefitted over the years from the patronage dispensed from the fiefdoms of boxing commissions are well known to the fight community.

But there are those who have suffered under this system, one of who has been Ron Lipton. Lipton became familiar to fight fans in the 1990s when he regularly officiated in bouts broadcast by, amongst others, the HBO, ESPN and Madison Square Garden channels. He was the third man in the ring in the first bout between Chris Eubank and Steve Collins, Evander Holyfield and Bobby Czyz, Tommy Morrison and Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock, Pernell Whitiker and Gary Jacobs, as well as other bouts involving Roy Jones, Roberto Duran and Oscar DeLaHoya.

Outside of the United States, Lipton refereed world title bouts in Italy and Ireland. His longstanding involvement in boxing ranges from an amateur career as a three-time Golden Gloves lightweight champion of New Jersey, to serving as a sparring partner for middleweights Rubin Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger, and as a witness to boxing history with his associations with these fighters and the likes of Muhammad Ali.

After years of being denied a licence, Lipton was granted one in October last year by the New York State Athletic Commission. This is a welcome development for those who recall the finesse and sense of professionalism which he exhibited during the bouts that he handled.

For Lipton, the key lies in selecting those who have “vast boxing experience, who are in shape, are quick, fluid, and have performed well under pressure while remaining cool”.

And how does he handle the aura of the contemporary boxing ‘superstar’ or high-profile fighter with an ego to match that of a Roman emperor? “All boxers, champs and challengers, should be treated the same,” he is on the record as stating.

When Bobby Czyz made insinuations about Evander Holyfield in a bout in order to get it stopped earlier than it eventually went, Lipton held firm. Fans will also recall Roy Jones signalling Lipton to stop his bout against Bryant Brannon. Brannon was being dominated by the lightening fast Jones, and from a distance he appeared to be getting consistently hammered. What most did not see, but as the third man in the ring was apparent to Lipton, was that Jones was missing many of his shots by fractions of inches. Again Lipton only stepped in when he was satisfied that Brannon was unable to continue.

Apart from insulating himself from the tendency for some referees to be overawed by the status of certain fighters, Lipton’s handling also makes a non-issue the sort of lingering suspicion held about some in his profession who have pre-designated notions as to the sort of fighting style they favour: boxer or puncher, the important thing is to treat both equally and not to allow either to get away with any infringements of the rules.

Biases of the aforementioned type were magnified when referees were given the responsibility for scoring bouts. This is no longer the case in American jurisdictions and is a state of affairs Lipton is happy with. “There is”, he once mentioned, “too much going on in the ring.”

And what do fans look forward to when Lipton is finally selected for his return to the ring? A calm and unobtrusive arbiter who is primed to make interventions when he adjudges such an action to be required. With Lipton there are not the sorts of irritating and objectionable features boxing fans have had to endure over the years including hysterical gesturing of the hands, the making of overly emotional faces or yelling orders to boxers in a gruff manner. Importantly, he sets the tone before the action commences by keeping control in the respective dressing rooms and preparing each fighter for any contingency before he gets into the ring.

As he stated in an interview conducted over a decade ago, “My instructions in mid-ring are always the same: ‘I’ve given you the rules. Respect each other, obey my commands, and let’s keep this strictly professional.”

The honour of having been selected to officiate a professional title match is what spurs him on, and boxing fans will no doubt be honoured to have him in the ring sooner rather than later.

Jersey Boy

Dick Tiger

About Me

Adeyinka Makinde trained for the law as a barrister. He lectures in criminal law and public law at a university in London, and has an academic research interest in intelligence & security matters. He is a contributor to a number of websites for which he has written essays and commentaries on international relations, politics and military history. He has served as a programme consultant and provided expert commentary for BBC World Service Radio, China Radio International and the Voice of Russia. He is the author of Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal (2005) and Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula (2010).